Ways to Overcome Fear: 7 Tips to Help Women Build More Confidence by Melinda Garvey

Greatness sits beyond fear. Unfortunately, building the confidence to overcome that fear is too much to handle for some women. With many of us having just set big goals for the new year, it’s going to take facing those fears head on in order to reach those goals. How can you do it? As founder of OnTheDotWoman.com, I've spent the past 15 years interviewing some of the most successful women in the world. When it comes to building confidence and overcoming fear, many of the women shared some common characteristics that can help us all out:

• Remember it’s just a feeling. Your heart pounds. You sweat. You are short of breath. These are just physical symptoms of an adrenaline response. No matter how awful it feels, a panic attack never killed anyone. Remind yourself that it’s just a feeling and it’s only temporary. Remember, facing your fears head on is the only way to overcome them, build your confidence and expand your comfort zone.

• Follow the footsteps of someone who has already done it: The best way to learn something new and build confidence is to mirror someone who has already accomplished what you are afraid to achieve. Whether it’s a personal or professional goal, study how this other person succeeded and more importantly, how he failed. Implement the things that worked for them and avoid the things that didn’t.

• Be prepared: The best way to build your confidence and overcome your fear is to be prepared to face them. If you’re tired, hungry, stressed out, sick or just not in the right frame of mind on a particular day, wait for when you’re feeling like your best self. Being prepared also means having a game plan for each step you take as you move closer to the fear.
  

• Small steps are best: If you look at the big picture when it comes to your fears, you’re going to feel overwhelmed and it’s going to seem impossible. Instead, break your fears down into smaller, more manageable steps. Work at tackling your fears in small steps and before you know it you’ll be where you need to be.

• Procrastination makes it more difficult: It’s easy to put your fears off for some later time down the road. But delaying the inevitable only builds up your anxiety and makes things worse. If you have a fear you’ve been putting off, it’s time to act with a sense of urgency and start taking the steps to overcome it today.

• Don’t be afraid of success: As crazy as it sounds, sometimes the fear of success is what often holds us back. We fall into a comfort zone, and even though we are more than capable of moving forward and accomplishing great things, the fear of change and the unknown keeps us stuck where we are. Remember, the only way to overcome self-doubt and build massive amounts of confidence is to always keep moving forward.

• Don’t be afraid of failure: Start to see failure as your friend. In fact, the only way to move ahead is to fail over and over again. Treat failure as a teacher and remember that even the most successful people in life got there by learning from their failures. Without failure there can be no growth.

When it comes to fear, remember this quote from the movie We Bought A Zoo: “Sometimes all you need is 20 seconds of insane courage – 20 seconds of embarrassing bravery and I promise you something great will come of it.”

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